Eruption: Finding God in Van Halen

A Memory and Reflection

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I was nine years old the first time I remember God speaking to me. It wasn't with his voice, but through Eddie Van Halen's guitar. My cousin came to visit from the faraway land of Seattle and he set up a little Peavey combo amp in my living room. He ran a couple cables, from a guitar I remember only as “red”, to a distortion pedal, the color and make I forget, to the little 15W speaker. He clicked to light up the orange little “on” bulb and let rip a massive E power chord. I’d never heard anything like it. He then produced a Van Halen's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 from his bag, the gold logo on an otherwise blank black cover looking like some mythical ring from a fantasy world. From jewel CD case, to cheap Casio boombox, to the deepest reaches of my heart forever, moved the disc. My cousin hit “play” and the joy of music “Erupted” into places of my soul that were before unknown to be.

He played along on his red guitar, eager to show off his pyrotechnic mastery of Eddie's signature song. I'm sure if I could watch a film of this revelation that his rendition would leave much to be desired. But, praise God, memory is not so sterile, nor our experience, and what I remember most is the rapturous celebration of life that this extended lead guitar voyage was and is to me.

I'm certain it sounded as if it was all coming out of tin cans, but in my cherished recollections it may as well have thundered from the mountaintops, so deep did it ripple through my guts and my bones. Storming toms carrying crashing waves of downstroked distorted fifths and octaves. Wilds bends and pentatonic runs rolling recklessly downhill only to leap skyward and become the cries of some frantic bird of prey on the hunt. Then, both hands on the neck of the guitar. Hammering down, pulling off, tapping out pianistic classical arpeggios in a legato I didn't know was possible on guitar, nor did anyone really, prior to Eddie.

Later, I would come to see music as a means to an end. I took up playing and it made me relatively popular for all my innate nerdiness and too hefty frame that otherwise haunted my high school years. I wanted girls to like me most of all – not revelatory regarding an adolescent boy – and music got the job done, though I was often too insecure or stupid to notice. Outside of the attentions of the opposite sex, music was my main way of pursuing external validation generally. I was talented and people told me so. But I didn't love music anymore. It was all about what I could exploit it for. And when those validating emotional veins of gold were all mined out, when I couldn't feed the love-and-attention monkey on my back any longer, I was filled with terrible anxiety and seriously considered quitting. Likely I would have were I not more or less bound to finish my Bachelor's degree in music.

Many years later I'd return to my first love in a pure way, after I had, by the grace of God, left behind a lot of the petty concerns that plagued my selfish attempts to turn the gift of music toward my misshapen ends. And this brings to mind another gripping memory that comes from that time of beginnings.

My childhood friend and I went off, shortly after I'd heard “Eruption” for the first time, and plugged in our dads' electric guitars, cranked the gain and the volume, and let 'em roar. We had no regard for tuning or harmony or rhythm or our still-developing eardrums. But it was our innocent and unskillful way of tapping into the celebration of life that I first heard on that CD with my cousin's likely faltering accompaniment. There were no dreams of stardom or fawning applause for us then. Just a raucous ode to the glory of life itself.

I lost that joy and innocence when I discovered technical excellence. As I traveled ever farther down that asymptotic path to mastery, I saw that proficiency brought worldly rewards and I went after them, I regret, with everything I had. Now, on the other side of the rockstar dream, I understand why “Eruption” did what it did to me.

There is a portion of Psalm 33 that beseeches us to sing to God a new song and “play skillfully and shout for joy”. My friend and I had the shout for joy part down pat. I now have the skill to a high degree. And between these two and in that Psalm I realize what happened at nine years old. God, before I knew Him, was showing me a way to fulfill the deepest longing of my heart: to love and worship Him. And whether Eddie meant it to be, his signature solo tells of the glory of the God who made him and gave him the hands and the mind to shout from his cranked-up 5150, “the Lord is Beautiful and Mighty!”

I thank God that most days now I can take my eyes off of “me” and lose myself in the thunder and lightening of a burning guitar solo or in the quiet, rain-soaked contemplation of a Chopin nocturne. I delight in my recently discovered yet God-given ability to play a song just for Him and not worry what anybody else thinks. I know now that music exists, like all things, to sing the praises of the Awesome King of Glory.